


A Few Good Men

by walk_in_sunshine



Category: Bonanza
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, mentions of gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 12:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30106215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walk_in_sunshine/pseuds/walk_in_sunshine
Summary: They're staring at him like they've never seen dungarees and steel helmets. He's staring right back. This is no John Wayne movie, and he ain't no cowboy. In which there is one very lost marine, a string of murders, and a prodigal son. Rating and blurb subject to change. Time-Travel. No pairings. All trigger warnings within except LANGUAGE, I forgot! Marines and their dirty mouths. Cross-Posted from ff.net.





	1. Death and Hell

_Chapter One: Death and Hell_

He wasn't drowning anymore. He had his helmet. He had his KABAR, and the Jap pistol that Doc Howard couldn't manage to get away from him in those first few days after he was spared death on Peleliu. He didn't have these things on hand before, but he did now. He focused on that. He focused on that, and not drowning, and he very specifically did not focus on the fact that _not drowning_ meant that he was no longer on some godforsaken Navy shit bucket in the Pacific. He walked very well for a man experiencing mortal panic. Cpl. Thomas Lawton, 2nd Marine Division, made his way down the avenues of Western Town, Hollywood Corner, as if he were back on the streets of his hometown.

People were staring. As if he were the one out of place. He wasn't sure if he was even breathing as he smiled at them. Heaven was fucked for sure if it smelled like horse shit all the time- and it sure was a temperate day to be in Hell. Perhaps Purgatory had such a line these folks'd been here since the first Thanksgiving (that's a joke, of course, though he's not sure how it's funny). It was getting harder to smile, and his steps were a little stilted now, and it felt like he was drowning again, _and he wished he'd done his drowning in the Pacific and not here in front of these-_

Tom slipped between a pair of brick buildings and crouched against a wall, throwing up great amounts of bluish liquid and what was left of his late dinner. He felt the heaving of the seas and plopped in the dirt with a throbbing head and his breathing just barely contained. He hadn't lost it through two years of jungle combat and he wasn't losing it now. He could feel vomit on his chin. He hadn't the strength to wipe it off. The marine rolled his eyes toward the mouth of the alley and watched a few curious civilians watching him. When he blinked he saw the roiling ocean and his ship aflame. _He hadn't lost it through two years of jungle combat. He wasn't losing it now._

None of the civilians lingered. They passed a curious glance at him in his tattered dungarees and continued on their way. Tom gathered his strength and crawled toward a corner. He cradled his helmet in his lap. He traced the scars in the herringbone cover while tapping his fingers on the steel. For just a moment, the man was homesick- and laughed at himself, because it was the first time in a long time he'd had the chance to feel anything.

_Adapt. Overcome._ _Even if the afterlife does look like a John Wayne movie._

He couldn't tell where he was. Definitely America, if he had heard the murmurs correctly before falling into the alley. He couldn't tell when. Not 1945. The women's dresses swished about their ankles like his grandmother's did.

A swelling panic made his hands quiver. He couldn't think, so he tried drawing pictures in the dirt. It was easy, mindless. He drew bomber planes and flowers, a Japanese woman he'd seen in a dead soldier's photograph. They looked like squiggles. He stared at his hands. They were cleaner than they'd been in months. He noticed blood under his fingernail, and he tried to claw it out with a broken thumbnail and then with his knife, and when both failed he punched the wall he rested against and grounded himself through pain. He wondered if this was some personal hell meant to drive him insane. Another burning ring, where the last one had failed. He felt alive now, but he'd felt alive before too. On Guadalcanal. On Gloucester. On Peleliu. There was a noise in his head that persisted then in the quiet between bombardments, and it lingered with him now. And he felt sick, again, and there's no other feeling but the cold and the racing jumble of noise in his head. Without thinking he unholstered his pistol, stuffed the barrel into his mouth angled up toward his brain and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Ben Cartwright's trip to town that morning hadn't been the most exciting. Candy had left his side to pursue his latest fling (with promise of course to help load the wagon before leaving town). He dropped a list of goods off at the general store, and paid a brief visit to the bank. He had an ultimately fruitless experience there when he decided that with the spring roundup already clouding his thoughts and a certain son's birthday coming up a little too soon _-and Joe was a grown man now, he didn't need a birthday present, but there were some fine horses coming off the Rocking K lately, and-_ put simply, future business investments could wait a little while. Immersed as he was, Ben nearly plowed straight through the young Mrs. Henderson on her way to the haberdashery.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Sally!" Ben chortled, sidling out of the little woman's way.

"You Cartwrights never watch where you're going, Ben, it's always rush rush rush with you lot!" Mrs. Henderson had never been a woman to chide much, and true to her nature there was a smile in her eye. "One of these days, Mr. Cartwright, you'll trod on my toes- and _not_ at a barn dance!"

"Oho Mrs. Henderson, I'd never," Ben fetched the door for her, and with a little thought followed her inside.

"Mrs. Henderson, I have your order ready for this week," smiled the little clerk from the top of a step stool near the store window. "It's right behind the counter, one moment. Is there something I can fetch for you Mr. Cartwright?"

Paul Osler and his wife Jane had leased the little shop only a year ago. Their journey west was halted by Janey's brief illness, but after the incident and with only a little friction between them and the shopkeep across the street, the pair had found Virginia City their welcome new home. Janey was an efficient seamstress. Pre-fashioned garments hung in every quadrant of their shop, most of them assembled by her own busy hands.

"How about a new suit, Paul?" Ben's church suits were starting to look a little worse for wear in ways that a bachelor had no way of mending. "Or maybe two."

Paul's wife flitted down from their upstairs living quarters to chat with Mrs. Henderson while the clerk himself took Ben's measurements. She had a pale look about her, and it wasn't her typical shade of sickly. Ben inquired of her health.

"She's received ill word I'm afraid," Paul hummed, just below her hearing range. "Her brother has died suddenly. His wife is coming by stage from the Dakota Territories. Janey worries for her."

"Oh I do love what you've done with that yellow fabric," Jane was purring, "what a beautiful dress." The hollow look hung in her eyes even through her smile.

Ben felt the tape measure pull at his shirt. Sally Henderson left the store with a grin, and Janey pretended to straighten the counter as she tried to get a listen in on the menfolk's murmuring.

Mrs. Henderson was shrieking before she rounded the street corner.

* * *

_Click._ His teeth were hurting. And his knuckles. And he thought perhaps the screaming might mean he was already in hell. But his eyes were open before he even realized- perhaps they'd been the whole time- and the world still looked like _The Lucky Texan_ in color. The lady fainted dead away in the gathering crowd and he watched a light breeze stir the exposed petticoats under her yellow dress.

He felt a little hazy, like he'd woken from a dream he didn't know he was having. His teeth clacked against steel. His hands were still shaking. He bit down on the Jap pistol.

_Failure to fire._

Another man was dragging the hand away from his mouth and he thought without much care that he might pull the trigger again out of spite. Or shame. There was yelling, and below that a consistent murmur in the ranks. Two men waved their arms. The crowd backed away. Another man burst through with a six-shooter like his granny's. They took his Jap pistol from him very gently, and hands were waving about in front of his face, and he knew men were shouting but now he heard only the ringing in his ears. He focused on the lady in the yellow dress. She'd been revived, and refused to look at him as she clutched her husband while a breeze he couldn't feel tickled the dark tendrils of her hair.

They were dragging him. Tom twisted and vomited very near one of their boots, and they paused only briefly while his stomach lurched. In a motion he wasn't half-sure was assistance or hindrance, Tom kicked his legs and struggling sought a glimpse of yellow in the crowd.

The errant little clicking of the hammer of that silly looking pistol was louder entirely than Mrs. Henderson collapsing from fright. There was a suspended moment between seeing that boy in the alley and hearing the click that would haunt Ben till his dying day.

Adam had never been one to wear green, and those sun-rotted dungarees were of a style he'd never seen before, _but that jaw, that mat of black hair usually kept so neat, and he could almost see Elizabeth's pursed lips in that mouth that did_ _ **not**_ _belong to his son._ The realization almost halted Ben's approach, but when honey-hued eyes bore into him and the man's hand shook as it tightened on the pistol, Ben renewed his haste.

"Son, look at me," the boy was so cold, and his gaze so distant it was like the gun had gone off after all. "Son." But the man's brains were where they belonged, and he didn't fight Ben for the pistol. "Look at me here now, you're alright."

A crowd had gathered. Mr. Henderson was supporting his wife, the shopkeeps were crowding the alley, and someone had run for the sheriff who called out for order and to let him through. Ben stopped Sheriff Coffee with a single look, and Candy's candy-red shirt popped through the crowd just after him.

"What's happened here, Ben?" Coffee asked, nudging the stranger's foot.

"He tried to shoot himself."

"The gun jam?" Ben didn't relinquish the pistol. He wiped the dirt off carefully, nodding as he did, and tucked it in his trousers. The make of it, the pattern of the stranger's boots, the steel helmet near his trembling hands were things he couldn't quite recognize and didn't want to be asked about before they had a chance to bring the man to his senses.

"Let's get him in a cell. Get him some water, feed him." Roy was looking into the boy's vacant eyes, waving, snapping, without response. "He don't seem to be all there."

Candy didn't need to be told, and took one half of the stranger's body while Ben took the other. The crowd parted, but not without some complaint. Ben's hands shook minutely. They made the short walk to the jail in a relative quiet that resounded in the scraping boots of Virginia City's newest prisoner. A dozen people lingered eight feet behind, but the doors to the jail itself were a barrier to them. Ben and Candy maneuvered the skin and bones and dungarees onto a cot, put day-old coffee in his hands, and waited for him to return to himself.

"On the streets of town," Roy hmmed regretfully. "Such a mortal sin."

Ben shot him a look but said nothing, choosing instead to fiddle with the confiscated pistol. It had no cylinder, or visible hammer. The aging man concluded with a bit of uneasiness that he had no idea how to unload the weapon, and placed it on Roy's desk for temporary safe keeping. Then he turned to watch the young man- soldier, by the looks of him- in his stupor. There were questions. He felt a lingering nausea. Black hair. Hazel eyes. Black hair, hazel eyes- _he's not yours!_ Ben's toes tapped. The racing in his heart nearly drove him out of the chair to pace.

It was Candy that got him to speak.

"You look like Robles." _God, he almost_ sounded _like Adam._

Candy was the only one in the cell with him. He had the steel helmet in his hands and was turning it slowly, tracing scars and tears along the worn twill cover. The other man was seated not too close and was not looking at him.

"The name's Canaday." There was too much tension in the air. "You can call me Candy."

"Lawton. Tom." The words were spaced apart as though he wasn't sure he wanted to give them up. His hands were balled in tight fists, his back straight as a rod, and he still wasn't looking at Candy.

The sheriff, intent on cutting right to the hard questions, opened his mouth and released fire. Ben shook his head, watching Candy watching Tom, who twitched and said nothing. Eyes forward. Chin out. There was a shiver in his shoulders only Candy could see. Tom's eyes closed and he let out a slow breath. The questions seemed to dizzy the boy.

"Leave me here alone." Tom half-stood and unbuckled his belt, handing it and his sheathed knife to Ben's foreman.

"Now son, we need you to answer these questi-"

"You can ask me again in the fucking morning."

"Now boy-" Sheriff Coffee started, but Candy stood and cut him off.

"Let's do as he says." The fuming sheriff made a face like he'd throw Candy in a cell of his own, but Candy waved his hands placatingly. "Head home, Roy, and see what your wife's got ready for supper. You too, Ben. You need to get that flour home to Hop Sing before he and Hoss form a mob." Cartwright and Coffee both made to argue and Candy wouldn't let them.

"I'll stay."

He didn't know, really, how he got them to agree to it. Hours later, in the company of a stranger, Candy ate a meal of cold cornbread and salted beef. Prison fare to be sure, but nothing more nor less than what Tom had eaten. A word had not been spoken between them. Tom propped himself in the corner of the cell, angled to keep one eye on Candy, and appeared to doze for short snatches he broke by stiffening noiselessly. When this occurred, the man would grit his teeth- it had to hurt by now- and pace twice around the boundaries he was confined in. There was a smattering of rain to be heard, and the jail wasn't the warmest of buildings in town. A pop from the furnace made Tom jump clean off the cot and into a crouch half under it. Candy watched as the man's face reddened, and looked away before he was looked at himself.

"I don't see any reason for you to be locked up in there, Lawton," Tom's possessions were safe in a lock box and Candy himself went unarmed. A few heavy objects lined Coffee's desk, but Candy had faith in his hand-to-hand combat skills and more faith altogether in the other man. "How 'bout a game of cards and a smoke?"

A rare smile greeted him. It was a little hesitant at the corners and didn't quite reach the man's eyes, but it was a smile nonetheless as Tom replied, "boy you sure said the magic word."

The magic word, it turned out to be, was "smoke." He still didn't say too much, but Tom was a different man behind a cigarette. His sallow skin took on a new life. He smiled easier. He was a lucky poker player too, though Candy was more focused on the man than the game. In rare form, Tom made eye contact. He was celebrating a full house, but there was something hollow behind his eyes and so dark the ranch hand scarcely heard him. He'd seen that look before. In other men. In the mirror. There was fear there, and a little bit of shame. To say there was pain there would be to say the ocean was a little wet.

Candy gulped and was unable to hide it. He almost asked the bitter question when the dark eyes turned away from him. Scarred hands shuffled the deck and dealt the next hand. Off the bat Candy had two pair, but they were low, and he put down two cards seeking a flush. Whether this was a wise move he couldn't decide.

"Look at us two. Bachelors, having a game of cards. Spring's around the next-"

"I'm not a bachelor."

Tom tossed down an appaloosa hand in a stroke of bad luck and Candy won with his remaining pair. Candy took the cards in hand and shuffled.

"My wife is farther from me now than the coasts of Australia." The stranger's poker face was chiseled from stone. He flicked through his cards with a restrained aggression, but there was nothing at all in his tone. "Her last letter to me conveyed the loss of our unborn child. It was a boy. She wasn't sure she ever wanted to see me again and left our home for her mother's."

Their silence was renewed, and this an uneasy one. Tom laid two cards on the table. Without looking at his hand Candy let one slip out of his fingers. He was slow to deal. He didn't see who won before Tom was taking the cards in hand again. A horse galloped down the street and he stiffened, and tweaked the cards a little in a way that was sure to crease.

"What's brought you here?" Candy wasn't sure if the question was meant to change the subject or pursue it.

Tom didn't answer. Their next several hands were marked by an almost stillness, and the dripping of rainwater through the ceiling. Tom blew a smoke ring gracefully and laid down a losing hand.

"These cigarettes are shit."

Candy was almost offended.

"You get what you get in prison, I'm afraid," he tisked.

He moved to sweep the cards into one pile when Tom laid his hand flat down on top of them. Candy had been studying the other man and didn't need to look down to see the angry licking scar of a terrible burn. Tom's eyes were fixed somewhere above and to the right of Candy's head in a gaze the cowpoke knew was empty. There was a furrow deepening in his brow.

"What would you say if I told you," the man's voice was almost a whisper, "that I got these burns off a screaming Japanese man wielding a machine that breathed fire?"

Candy's eyes drifted down to the hand between them- Tom's left- and traced the ugly, angry, licking scar that disappeared behind the sleeve of Tom's shirt. He felt the prisoner's peering at him. His skin prickled. They made eye contact for half a second before Tom smirked and so did Candy.

"I'd say you're a long ways from Tokyo Bay, amigo." There was something sour behind Tom's smirk that Candy couldn't place, and he tried to shove the new uneasiness around in his head with everything else the last day had shoved in there. "Say, don't go telling stories like that about the ladies. These Virginia City gals are tough and all, but that doesn't mean spooking them into a fervor will do you any good."

"Virginia City," Tom hummed, sliding the pile of nearly forgotten cards over.

"Like you didn't know," Candy countered. A bit of their camaraderie was lost in the exchange.

"When do you think the sheriff will let me out of the hoosegow?"

Cards were dealt and played a little too rapidly.

"When he's sure you won't cause a ruckus."

"Causing ruckus is what I was bred for."

"Army brat?"

There was a smirk there.

"Devil Dog."

Candy glanced up from his hand. Tom almost didn't notice. He tapped the corner of a creased card against his nose and only by happenstance caught the cowboy's eye.

_Fuck._

He'd been thinking about the shitty smokes, and the war, and the cowboy that looked like Robles had got him on Viv. And Viv-

_Viv wouldn't have even had to guess. She wouldn't have fucked up, she'd have seen that lady in the yellow dress. First thing, that yellow dress- and commented on the color, and how his mother would have loved it, because she really couldn't help it- and she'd have said:_

" _Oh, Thomas! Look at her, how lovely, what a stunning gown characteristic of mid-1870s pioneer fa-"_

"Marine. Marine Corps. Uh."

He was coughing, and the picture of his wife was so visible he could almost touch her hair, and he recoiled instantly because the last time he'd touched her hair-

"I'd heard you Leathernecks were an odd bunch."

Candy was tapping his cards. Cards. Tom shuffled through his own but didn't see them.

"Didn't think y'all strayed too far from the naval yards."

"We marched 500 fucking miles to Tripoli, you fuck," Tom countered with the first early engagement of his people that came to mind, tossing down another losing hand.

He stood and paced the length of the jail. A drunk he'd never noticed moaned from halfway off a cot. Candy had a careful eye on him. He felt a sudden wrath that came and went so quickly it dizzied him. A claustrophobic chill followed. He wanted fresh air, some money, a fucking bus ticket.

_For what? Where are you going to go when you get out of here?_ The voice that had been begging for his pistol asked. Tom paid it no heed.

He glanced back at the red shirt he'd been staring at half the night. Or didn't quite glance, as he hadn't quite stared. He didn't want to see the face above the red, or recognize the bluebird eyes. He wouldn't put Robles' memory in stark crimson. Ever, anymore than he'd put the man's memory in any other color but olive drab and yellow-jaundice. Candy looked undecided as to whether he'd leap out of his chair and attack, or invite Tom to sit back down for another smoke.

"I'm sorry to offend." The words were measured a little carefully. "Just odd to see a marine out of place."

He felt almost hopeless when he responded, "feels odd to be out of place."

They were quiet a long time then. He tried not to think too hard about Viv, or about his empty hands. The cold bars of an empty cell supported most of his weight.

"I'll talk to Sheriff Coffee tomorrow on your behalf," Not-Robles promised from the far end of the jail.

Tom didn't quite look up at him. Candy beckoned to his vacant cell, and the marine's feet trudged heavily there.

"We'll get you on outta here." The bolt locked into place. "Then maybe you and I can have a drink and start off fresh."


	2. Wayfaring Stranger

_Chapter Two: Wayfaring Stranger_

He wouldn't let Candy see. He wouldn't let Candy see. He wouldn't let Candy see.

He was sweating visibly, and the cold air punished him for it. The horse between his knees could sense his fear. It tested him every step, tossing its ropy-muscled neck, shaking the reins loose of his hands. Once it stopped dead in the middle of the road and no amount of kicking could get it to move till it had shat itself silly.

"Not much of a horseman are ya?"

Candy's mouth must have hurt for how hard he grinned. If the man hadn't bought him so many beers (shit beers) and shared so many cigarettes (shit cigarettes) in the last day and a half, Tom would knock that smile a few shades duller. Instead the marine slapped his mount on the ass and watched its black-tipped ears pin back. He was reminded suddenly of his grandmother, and what had tried to be a smile fell from his face and he straightened in the saddle.

"You didn't hire me as a horseman, you shit," he called to Candy, "you hired me as an engineer."

"Fence-mender," Candy corrected, reining his sorrel in a slow circle that allowed his new friend to catch up.

"Combat. Engineer."

"I distinctly mentioned no combat."

They'd have to work on his actual skills, Tom knew. Candy touted Cartwright's benevolence like his mother once did the scripture; but the Marine Corps had taught him how to kill Japs, not rope cows.

"Well that's what I know so you'll have to just work with it."

"Have you never been on a horse before?" Candy jeered when the rented little bay snorted and struck out in a series of crowhops that had Tom scrambling for his saddlehorn.

"A long time ago." Tom glared at him. "I was a kid. I broke my arm. My granny beat me. Next day, ma moved us to the east coast."

Candy shook his head, watching his newfound companion sit the tantrum.

* * *

The Cartwrights found Tom Lawton to be an efficient worker. Quiet, and steady on his task. Over the course of a week he'd mended fences, patched leaking roofs, restored line shacks to order. He was relearning the rudiments of horsemanship, under the watchful eye of Candy who'd essentially been told that the marine was his special project until the spring branding season.

Despite the bite of a late February frost, Tom was sweating through his new shirt. He'd acquired it quite suddenly yesterday, when some other hands had found him bare-assed and unabashed in the bunkhouse while his dungarees dried on the hearth.

"You can get used to my pretty white ass, or you can get used to my stink," he'd warned them, and had suddenly had four tattered and worn but clean shirts tossed his way, and a pair of trousers he'd had to cuff to keep from trodding on.

He suddenly felt hollow. There must have been some hesitation in him, because Candy was suddenly on him. Tom watched the foreman's lips but didn't hear a word as the blood screamed in his ears. Tom looked down at his hands and found them in Candy's. He watched blood stream from his palms and wrists and felt his head spin.

"-crazy?! You've been tossing rolls of bob wire bare-handed. Where the hell are your gloves?"

Tom doubled over and heaved, Candy's grip on his wrists tightening to keep him from going all the way over. When the last of Tom's breakfast lay steaming on the ground, Candy hauled him to his feet and gave him a shove toward the wagon.

"You've got to be crazy, Lawton."

Candy tried to catch his eye, but he made himself uncatchable. He was slowly gaining feeling in his hands. Candy watched him flex each finger, watched his eyes tighten with each little pain. The marine breathed ragged spurts of vapor into the air between them. The foreman leaned against the wagon and, sighing, offered Tom a smoke and a light.

"What were you thinking?"

Tom brought the cigarette to his lips with a trembling hand. He smoked the whole cigarette before the shaking subsided.

"I suppose I've just seen quite a bit of barb wire," Tom finally replied. "And worked plenty of it bare-handed too."

He found his loaned gloves in the wagon seat, tugged them on over the running blood, and bent to work again.

"Tom, you can't keep working like this." Tom kept working like that. Candy tried again. "Tom, you need to get your hands doctored before you lose them."

The marine continued cutting and splicing wire, kicking at fence posts to test their give. He didn't so much as wince. Truth be told, he was the best damn handyman the Ponderosa had. And Candy didn't want to lose him so soon to infection or lameness.

Tom was in a world of his own, listening to the _rat-tat-tat_ of Nambu machine guns and feeling the fires of war burning around him. He shivered. Took out a weak strand of wire and spliced in a new one; testing, always testing. His blood dripped in the frost, and his stomach clenched weakly, and he smelled the charred flesh and the freshly turned earth, and-

Candy grabbed his shoulder. Tom spun, punching the man square in the nose. In a heartbeat the foreman was in a chokehold, which he promptly broke, and soon enough the two men were grappling and rolling along the frosty ground.

Tom was a dirty fighter. He ripped and gouged and flung himself headlong with a fury born of desperation. Candy hadn't fought a man to the death in many a long year, but his punches weren't enough to dull the mad glint in Lawton's eyes. They rolled over a spent pile of barbed wire and Candy immediately cried out.

Tom skittered backward. He'd wrapped a wire around his ankle in the fight and it dragged in the brush. Candy didn't move from the pile. He fought to catch his breath, feeling the snags bite at his skin.

"Robles," Tom wheezed.

Candy reached gingerly up and wiped blood from his nose. It took more energy than he thought he had to climb out of the barbed wire.

"What in the _fuck_ are you talking about?"

"Robles. You- you fucking…" Tom bent over and dry heaved. "You look like fucking Robles. That-that … ah fuck."

Candy watched him sag, and through the pain and the blood he allowed himself to feel something like pity. The man was muttering to himself and rubbing sullenly at his temple, that was already blooming in a black bruise.

"Get the shit and get in the wagon," Candy spat. Then groaned, rubbing his own head. "Now we both need doctorin'."

The ride back to the ranch house was slow. Enough time for both men's blood to cool, for Tom to apologize and for Candy to joke that he needed a warning sign. Candy's sorrel was in a rare mood and fought the bit and danced sideways from the cart, making the pair of drafts nervous and difficult to keep in hand.

After an hour's silence, Candy reined his prancing gelding to a halt. They were on a rise, just out of sight of the ranch house now and with a view of the sprawling acres behind them. Lawton didn't meet his eye.

"What did you see?"

He wasn't sure if he should have asked. He wasn't sure if he had the right to. Tom leaned back against the wagon seat and gritted his teeth. One of Candy's punches had split his browbone and a small trickle of blood had dried along his temple.

"I need to know what caused this," Candy needled. "If you start taking out the other hands because they breathed in your direction, we can't keep you on."

Tom took his time replying. He seemed to hold his breath a long minute, and returned to himself, and tried to spot the ranch house from their place on the ridge.

"Just don't touch me."

That was all he said. He flicked the reins across the horses' backs and clucked to them.

"You're lucky I like you."

At the ranch, he unhitched the pair from the wagon as they cropped tender new grass that grew in bright scattered patches. Candy watched him lead the drafts into the barn and didn't think about how small and empty the man looked. Candy'd taken his time rubbing down his mount and watering it, and when the stranger passed his stall with the stout chestnut horses in tow he followed to take one of them into his charge.

"You're not smearing blood down that animal's back are ya?" he chanced to joke.

No laugh, but a pair of gloved hands popped up over the horse's hindquarters. No blood. They let their work drag on, despite the stinging of their wounds. Things were still unsaid between them, apologies or no. After checking both horses' feet Candy finally caught Tom staring listlessly at the star on one's forehead.

"Why didn't you stop?" Candy asked. "When you saw it was me. _If_ you saw it was me."

Tom tugged gentle fingers through the animal's forelock. "You didn't stop. And I didn't see you."

They spent another few minutes of silence, breathing in horseflesh and hay. Candy invited Tom into the big house to have his wounds seen to by the Cartwrights' cook, and they were halfway out the barn when Tom grabbed lightly at Candy's shirt sleeve.

"Robles roasted to death in a tangle of barb wire."

It was all he said. By the time they'd reached Hop Sing's kitchen, Candy still hadn't managed a reply. Hop Sing and Tom had had a rocky start some days ago. Rather, Tom had had a rocky start just looking at Hop Sing, who in turn didn't seem to appreciate being treated like a hostile. Until, of course, it had come about that Hop Sing was a _China_ man and not Japanese; at which point Tom went red-eared and meek hearted into the man's kitchen and offered an afternoon's help, and a truce. The week's time had mellowed their uncertain beginning, and it was with grudging care and a whole earful of nagging that the Chinaman cleaned and stitched the grievous rents in his hands.

Candy's nose was broken. And that night at dinner, when ol' boss Cartwright saw and asked about it he'd lie and say it was a barroom brawl. Tom Lawton, who was habitually both glove and hatless, was seen to wear a bloodstained pair of rawhide gloves through his own dinner in the bunkhouse and even to bed.

He dreamed of Robles that night, in a moment's peace between shelling. There was a simple smile on the man's face, while some faceless others murmured around them. It was the first night in three years or more that he'd slept through till the dawning.

* * *

The newly widowed sister of Janey Osler arrived on a stage some three weeks after Tom's sudden entrance in their world. The widow looked perfectly prim and widow-like as the marine expected for these dime-novel characters he'd suddenly been tossed in the mix of. She looked like a Hollywood actress. Not a pretty one, but one of those side characters that didn't get to kiss Gene Autry, and complained a lot because of it. She'd looked down her nose a bit at him and at Hoss Cartwright as the latter tipped his hat to her on their way into the saloon.

It was Tom's first outing with any of the actual Cartwright ilk, and he heard an earful all the way to town about the Widow Shannon- Shannon bein' her last name, rather, not her first, and even then it'as her husband's last name anyhow so as to what she might like to be called now- and about the coming trials of the spring branding season. The man was a pleasant, gentle sort. The sort of man Tom hadn't met in some time. He was pleasant enough company, but Tom didn't miss the watchful eye he kept.

The Cartwrights knew there was something amiss with their new hand- the boys at least had heard from their pa about the unfortunate circumstance by which they'd met. He'd faced questions and stares and his fair share of mocking from the Cartwright boys and the men of the bunkhouse, and met them with his own cynic's humor and casual disinterest that belied his disturbance. Still, he didn't figure it was for a peep at the saloon girls that Hoss invited him to the Silver Dollar after concluding their business in town.

The saloon as they found it was busy with townsfolk and cowpoke alike, and Tom was on edge from the first whiff of cigarette smoke that tickled his nose hairs. Hoss ordered them a whiskey each but snagged the whole bottle before sliding through the maze of patrons to a back table.

"You said we were here for a beer," Tom ventured, choosing a seat facing the door and thrumming his fingers on the table.

"Well I just reckon I changed my mind," Hoss returned, winking at a passing saloon girl.

There were three different groups singing raucously around the bar, and a man playing tunelessly on a tinny piano somewhere Tom couldn't see. Ladies sitting in the laps of men playing poker and caressing their hair must have felt Tom's eyes at him for they gave him a glance and turned up their noses. An argument broke loose over a game, but no punches were thrown.

Tom tossed back his whiskey like it was water and kept tap-tapping the table. Hoss watched the way his eyes darted and took his whiskey more slowly. Two shots more, and Tom's breathing was nearly ragged when he hissed quietly,

"I need a fuckin' smoke."

Hoss, still casually nursing his first glass, thumbed down a cigarette girl. He waited until Tom had taken a shaky drag.

"So, Tom. Where ya from?"

Tom's bitter hazel eyes narrowed. "East."

Hoss smiled good naturedly and downed the last of his drink. "Well there's a whole lot in 'at general direction. You travel much?"

Tom shrugged. "Lately."

He refused to let Hoss pour him a third drink.

"Candy's might taken with you. Says you're earnin' your keep for sure."

He and Candy had hit it off from the start. He had seen an old friend in the lines of the foreman's face, and whatever the man had found in him must have left a mark. They were a different breed, Candy had mentioned, these Cartwrights. Honest, dependable folk. The way he'd said it, it meant a lot to him. And not to say Tom hadn't met and lived among such folk in the past, but the terror of the Solomons could smother the decency out of a man.

"I can work," he agreed finally, swirling his empty glass.

Hoss was smiling still, but it didn't reach his eyes. The interrogation went on some twenty more minutes in which Hoss learned only that the hand had spent his formative years in New York after being moved away from his grandparents' home as a boy. He joined the military. Fought some. Hoss wasn't privy to whatever current engagement the US Marine Corps might be seeing now, but the man across the table from him was still sallow-skinned and much too thin after nearly a month on the ranch. Wherever he'd been, the ghost of it was smothering him slowly.

"Havin' a party next weekend to kick off the season," Hoss finally commented. Tom had been paid half his month's wages in advance and had bought for himself new clothes and even a hat which he seldom wore, but he still seemed to prefer his ragged dungarees. "Lots of pretty gals'll be there. What say we pick you out a nice suit?"

"You tellin' me these Virginia City gals wouldn't swoon over some raggedy ass marine like me?"

Paul Osler's shop was less swarming than the saloon, but no less busy. Half the town would attend the weekend's party, and that meant clothes to mend and new suits and dresses to be fabricated all in a short span of time. Hoss was showing Tom some pre-fabbed suit pieces, to which the marine paid little attention.

The Widow Shannon had changed from her dusty travelling clothes to a dress that was butter yellow and cut low in the cleavage. She looked prettier in yellow. She was clucking with the tailor's wife, her sister, over bolts of this and that. Her laugh filled the shop.

"Oh Maggie dear, you must take some of this calico- oh, what a pretty pattern."

"Janey doll, I'd much rather that red brocade~"

Tom stumbled back suddenly from a pressure on his chest, tripping neatly over Hoss's feet. Osler, affronted that he'd caused such an incident was quick to lend a hand.

"Hoohoo, sorry lad. Just taking your measure, didn't mean to scare ya."

Tom expressed forgiveness between breaths, and his eyes drifted back to the yellow dress and up its draping form. Maggie Shannon was watching him. A grin came across her face and she leaned low into her shorter sister's ear, but Tom could still hear her ask,

"Who is that young man? He wasn't around when I last came to visit."

"Oh, that's young Thomas Lawton. He's a new hand on the Ponderosa. Little jumpy, but a real sweetheart- spent an hour helping me in the shop one afternoon he was off. Now look here at this-"

But Maggie Shannon had her eyes on him again, and he wasn't quite sure what he was feeling was butterflies in his stomach or a fluttering of unease.


End file.
